


my apple tree, my brightness

by Harmonica_Smile (Rescue_Remedy)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Ace is alive, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But crucial to the plot, Canon Elements, Character Study, Complete, Established Relationship, Gallows Humor, Law and Robin chatting like they do, Light Angst, M/M, Nico Olvia's birthday, Nico Robin's birthday, One Shot, Other, Rare Pairings, Rouge and Olvia are canonically not alive, They're background characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rescue_Remedy/pseuds/Harmonica_Smile
Summary: It's Nico Robin's birthday and she wants to visit her mother. Law accompanies her.
Relationships: (background), Nico Robin & Trafalgar D. Water Law, Portgas D. Ace/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	my apple tree, my brightness

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't have time to get anything ready for the AceLaw week, but here's something for Robin's birthday, with a side serving of Ace and Law.

* * *

my apple tree, my brightness

* * *

Robin was like Ace, but a lot calmer, selecting roses and gerbera from their garden, a few of the daisies around the border, then moving inside and taking a roll of ribbon and cutting into the ends of pieces three times before curling them along the edge of scissors.

She'd eyed Law's scalpel—there was usually one close by, but she also kept weapons of defence and attack at the ready, so she didn't blame him. She didn't ask him for it, though. She needed scissors anyway, and had rummaged through the kitchen drawer to find them.

Both guys took care of the garden. There was a little too much red. They liked flowers that bloomed fast and in abundance, but if you poked around, there were chocolate ranunculus, or a night cactus Law was training and Chopper sampling for medicinal properties.

"We should be doing that for you," Law said.

Robin looked up, and stripped a few leaves from a stem, and then back down, and shook her head slightly. "They're not for me." She'd already chosen from her own beds, but Law and Ace grew varieties she didn't.

"Yeah?" Law rested Kikoku by the table edge. He'd taken her from storage for polishing. He pulled out a chair and watched Robin remove foliage and arrange and rearrange the flowers. Once she was satisfied, she wrapped an elastic band around the base, and swaddled them in newspaper.

"Thanks for letting me have some of yours. It's nice to mix 'em up."

"It's your birthday. Can have whatever you want ."

That small smile.

Law swept a few granules of dirt into his palm, stood, walked to the door and shook them out into the garden that pressed right up to the entrance.

Robin searched through her bag for her keys. Law turned at the jangle. "Going? Ace'll be home soon."

"I'll come back." She picked up the flowers and tucked them in the crook of her arm. "I've gotta visit someone. Join me?"

Accompanying Robin usually didn't lead to paths he didn't want to tread, so Law crossed the room, lifted his hat from the table, jammed it onto his head, then slipped his wallet and own keys into his pocket.

* * *

The marker was smooth, but also crumbled, under years of wind and sun and snow and rain. No name. A sweep of the cemetery at some point would bundle the headstones together, shuffle them to an area that recognised but didn't maintain all the overlooked and unvisited graves. A hand wave of acknowledgement. Time passes. Too commonplace not to devalue to maximise space. But too unearthly to crush and recycle.

The stone was a lot older than Robin, and any of her immediate family, and even a few generations before that.

"You had relatives—ancestors—in this region?"

Robin peered up from where she'd brushed the dirt from the front of the monument, and from the splash of water she'd poured over it. She'd put out a mikan, and some sake, a ceramic doll reading a book. Law stood with the flowers.

Rising, she walked over and took them, emptying grimy pooled water and insects from a vase that stood by the grave, season-in season-out. "Can you pull up some of the weeds?"

It was clear and bright, there wasn't so much grey in the sky. Law looked down at the grass climbing the edges of the marble. He positioned himself near Robin and tugged at the roots.

"No, ancestors," she answered, "I'm not from here."

Law nodded and thought about his friend's mother in Flevance, giving them a beri for every weed with a bulb they managed to yank from the earth.

A flit of birdsong dashed overhead. They might walk to the park adjacent later and take in the plum blossom, which had just started unfurling.

"I'd hoped maybe there was someone," he said, "something left."

"You don't visit?" Robin swung an arm at the unmarked graves and posts and monuments penned in a corner of the grounds like cattle herded into trucks. "Could take your pick."

Law glanced around, a bit more aware, lined up a weed next to the others as if his friend's mother would count them later. Worried for a beat about grass stains. An unclaimed grave? Not a bad idea. "Sengoku has one for Cora."

Robin chose the dark ranunculus first and slipped it into the vase.

"But he knew where Cora fell. You told me the marines retrieved the body."

"He had a body," Law agreed.

"Your parents, sister?"

"No." Flevance was maybe not razed to the ground, but it came close.

"The unmarked or eroded graves are perfect for the unrecorded."

Law had his own methods of remembrance, but it wasn't a bad idea. He lowered himself from his knees, and crossed his legs, back curved, as he picked at the grass. "It's your birthday, though. Nami's gonna kill me if she knows we spent it at the cemetery."

Next was the red rose. Law had assured Robin that Ace wouldn't mind if she snipped it from the bush. She wasn't so sure, but it wasn't her argument to have.

"It's her birthday too," Robin said. Two cosmos and a gorgeous Casablanca lily joined the other flowers.

"Nami?" Law had known the Strawhats for years, but didn't always pay attention. It paid not to a lot of the time.

"My mother. I visit on her birthday." She looked again at toppled markers, overgrown weeds, cracked headstones, unengraved stones. "And the scholars. I visit them on our birthday. She loved them. I loved them too." Love them. She straightened the figurine. It was saccharine and would fade, but the porcelain girl read a book.

Robin kneeled back and admired the arrangement, ferns fanning out the back.

Law pushed himself up and extended a hand.

"Wipe that muck onto your jeans first."

Law looked at the dusting of dirt in his palms. The stretch of green gilding the lines. "Sorry."

"Call yourself a surgeon."

"Sometimes."

She took the now cleanish hand and hauled herself up. "Birthdays. Y'know?"

Law did. He knew the days but not the years of his parents' birth. Too caught up in being ten to have asked. Lami had been two years younger than him.

He squatted again and folded the newspaper around the weeds, gathered the few segments of stem that had needed trimming to fit the vase. Pricked himself on a thorn. Swore. Shook out his hand, sucked the thumb, and then proceeded to shovel everything into an eco-bag to dispose of later.

Robin waited, handbag over her shoulder.

"Plum blossoms?" Law asked, joining her.

"Oh yes. I'm sure the ghosts are all enjoying them."

Law linked his arm in hers and air feathered past them, no weight, so Robin was probably right; the ghouls were hanging out, drinking in the omens of spring.

* * *

"You and Ace come here?"

"Once they're in full bloom. He's too impatient to look out for the buds as they come into flower."

"He prefers sakura?"

Law nodded. "Yeah. Y'know, the cherry blossoms are just so—." Vibrant. Law spread his hands as if a small explosion had just gone off.

Robin followed the motion. “You mean he likes the sake he can cadge from the picnics."

"Food he can steal. The friends he makes."

"How about you?"

Robin and Law sat on a bench, viewing the trunks, dark as if a shower of rain had spilled over the bark, and admired the deep pink blooms against them. And the whites, and lighter pinks. Law liked the depth of the less common richer colours.

"It's better if he goes with Luffy." It was cheaper for Law at least. Ace always ate more than his own wallet allowed.

"But you joined us. Last year you joined in." And it wasn't a first.

"Fine if I'm with people I know. If I can take a little time out."

Robin knew. Sometimes the two of them rested against a tree at the yearly cherry blossom viewing, the occasional petal falling onto the open pages of their books. Ace raced up now and then. Made sure Law had a beer, Robin a chu-hai if they hadn't got up off their lazy arses and fetched them already. If Sanji joined them, Robin didn't need to worry, but Law was left thirsty.

The cherry trees also abutted the cemetery. Plum trees towards the back, the cherries at the entrance of the park. No food stalls greeted the visitors observing the flowers of the understated plum, their appearance letting winter know her days were numbered.

But takoyaki, yakisoba, cotton candy, French fries, fried chicken and more jostled for space when the cherry trees put on a show a month or two later when the weather was warmer. Far more people came.

"Spring makes up for the New Year for him."

"Hmm?" Robin stood and wandered to a tree. Focused her mobile den den and snapped a picture. She sent it to Law. He pulled out his phone. Looked at it and smiled at her. "Let's walk more."

She nodded and they set off, side by side. No contact.

"He really seems to enjoy the celebrations."

"Yeah, he likes them. Especially fireworks. But his mother passed on January first."

"His birthday?"

"In childbirth."

She paused to take another few snaps of a weeping plum. They weren't so widespread. "Mentor to the morbid, Trafalgar?"

"Me?"

They resumed their stroll and Robin looked ahead, but nodded. Everything was amusing to her. But everything she found amusing, Law did too. But he also saw the appeal in pouring lost potential and accrued pain into a blank gravestone. In folding back the blankets of grief, just a little. How it might entice you to crawl under the covers to not seek out darkness, but peace. Even if there was some peace in darkness.

"Master to the morbid, Nico?"

"Not to. Of."

"Of course."

"La petite mort. The smallest deaths give us pleasure."

"I'm not gonna have sex with Ace in a graveyard."

"It's kinda fun."

"You and Franky?" Law didn't think Robin and Ace had got up to anything.

"Some of us are more adventurous than our great-grandmother's doilies," she replied.

"Yeah. Diversity is the spice of life." Essential for it. Lace crotchet hooks were made of steel, after all.

They turned down the path into the second park and past the still bare cherry trees. "Franky kinda gets a rise out of anything a bit different," Law said. "And you're you." He scanned the branches to see if there were any buds, but nothing yet.

"And you, you." Robin stopped, took his hands. "These," she ticked off the tattoos on his fingers, "in this location. What could be more fitting?"

The brim of Law’s hat brushed Robin’s hair as he stared at his ink, then loosened his grip from hers, steepled his hands and flexed them outwards. She had a point. They continued their loop.

"I'll run the idea of adopting an orphan past him first."

"Good," Robin said, there were plenty of graves that needed attention. "Then the fucking."

"He's not Sanji." Law tipped his cap up minimally.

"I know, that's why I suggested fucking."

Usopp would've died if he'd been with them, and Sanji would've kicked him (but not Robin) from one side of the park to the other, or tried. But it was just them.

"Wicked," Law said, his grin a break in the weather.

"No rest for the wicked, Trafalgar."

Unlike for those quiet below the unmarked stones.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from [Stretched on your Grave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tcwlCHSdGQ) by the gorgeous (and very young at the time) Sinéad O'connor. Gorgeous song too.
> 
> Okay, so I know, strictly speaking, that if there was something marked on a monument at some point it is not unmarked, but an unmarked grave can occur from lost registries, burnt wooden markers, and if the actual marker has faded so much, and the records are lost too, then I figure it's synonymous with unmarked (for this story). 
> 
> Also, the grass would probably not be so green at this time of year, so just transport the location to your green location of choice. Maybe the weeds were a bit more dried out.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comment love is most welcome here 🖤
> 
> [My tumblr](https://chromatic-lamina.tumblr.com/).  
> [My twitter](https://twitter.com/ChromaticLamina).


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